The Nevada Revised Statutes are full of low hanging fruit to pick for Republicans who want to put the free market principles to work, expand the tax base, and earn bajillions of new voters. Sometimes, those opportunities involve actual fruit!

Northern Nevada has a climate that's particularly well suited to growing grapes. Grape vines use far less water than other Nevada crops, and are drought resistant. So why isn't Washoe County awash in local vino? Why aren't we equally awash in the jobs and tax revenue such an industry would generate?

Because for reasons unrelated to logic, facts, or economics, lawmakers years ago passed a law restricting wineries to Nevada's rural counties.

Reno Assemblyman Pat Hickey has a bill to rectify that, and it's a great start. But it only scratches the surface of the inanity of Nevada's regulatory approach to alcohol manufacturing and distribution.

For example, where wineries are allowed, they can sell you glasses of wine on the premises. But then they become severely limited to how much wine they can sell anywhere else – in fact, they can't sell more wine "off campus" than they can at the winery itself.

Brew pubs and craft distilleries face similar ceilings, limiting the amount of product they can produce and sell. And that's not all – the law distinguishes between retailers, manufacturers, wholesalers, and suppliers, and in most cases prevents anyone engaged in the business of one from doing the other. If you brew a really good beer, you probably have to find someone else to haul it to a bar for you so someone else can sell it.

There is no legitimate reason for this. None. The ghost of Carrie Nation wouldn't think this is sane public policy. All it does is put an artificial ceiling on a business' growth, which in turn puts a cap on the entire state's economic growth. And for what?

The Legislature claims in NRS 597.190 that it's "to insure the orderly distribution and marketing of alcoholic beverages in this state in order to protect locally owned and operated business enterprises and those residents whose livelihoods and investments are dependent on their freedom to manage their businesses without economic and coercive control by nonresident suppliers of alcoholic beverages."

That's right – they're protecting your freedom by controlling your business practices! And they're protecting local businesses by making sure they don't sell too much of their product, or make too much money!

That Orwellian gem was approved by the Legislature in 1975. Forty years later, how has that worked out for our local entrepreneurs, consumers, or the economy as a whole?

Nevada law is full of this sort of protectionist nonsense. At best, it's misguided. At worst, it's corrupt. Either way, enough is enough. If Republicans are smart enough to let Nevada voters use Uber to get safely home from Washoe Valley wine tasting tours, they just might earn the right to keep those majorities.